Apurva, the story of a girl-next-door who discovers the bravery in her when she is faced with a situation of extreme brutality, is now streaming on Disney+Hotstar. Starring Tara Sutaria in the titular role, the film — that also stars Rajpal Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee and Dhairya Karwa — has met with positive reviews. t2 chatted with its director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat (whose previous directing credits include Hurdang and Brijmohan Amar Rahe, among others) on his latest.

What made you want to make Apurva?

I wrote this way back in 2009-2010. I was brought up in Patna. In the ’80s and ’90s, the law and order situation wasn’t very good there. My sisters and their friends could not venture out after 6pm. The crime rate against women was very high. Thankfully, it has reduced a lot now and I hope it keeps getting better.

But the fact is that it has not stopped. I am not just talking about Patna or north or south or east or west. It is, unfortunately, everywhere and not just in India.

The second reason for making this has always intrigued me. Our lives are going absolutely fine, we have dreams and goals and hopes in our eyes and suddenly one incident comes our way and it just puts our lives on a toxic path. It changes everything.

It can happen to any of us. We are tested in our ability to stand up in the face of crisis. This is exactly the story of Apurva. These were the thoughts when I wrote this.

It looks like it was a tough film to shoot....

We were shooting in a place called Kuldhara, which is 50 km away from Jaisalmer in November. It is a very rocky and hostile terrain. There are shrubs and thorns as well as scorpions, snakes and gravel. It is very hot in the day and very cold at night. It was very testing for all the actors, not just for Tara (Sutaria), but also specially for her because she had to run barefoot.

However much you try and clear the path, you cannot clear the gravel or the thorns. And when she was in motion and had to, say, turn right, we wouldn’t cut. She would keep running because it was a fantastic shot which we wanted to keep taking. So physically, there were injuries every day. She dislocated her shoulder a couple of times. She sprained her ankle, sprained her wrist and elbow. Rajpalji (Yadav) had a fall and he hurt his back. Abhishek (Banerjee) sprained his neck.

Also, emotionally, it was very challenging for Tara because she had to live those moments. I would like to point out here that we did not prep so much about the script, about the scenes. We just spoke about the character, the situation and the world. Consciously, Tara and I decided that we would not discuss the scenes in detail because we wanted to capture the emotions very organically.

These are not emotions that you can rehearse and come up with. We needed it to be very natural. That started becoming a problem because one cannot put any woman in that situation. And when the terrain looks like that, it adds on to the emotional challenge.

Tara would go into her tent and prepare. I would just peep in sometimes and ask her if she was fine. She would just do a thumbs up and that’s about it. There would not be too much of discussion about it because she wanted to stay with those emotions. Even Abhishek and Rajpal sir, because they were playing guys who were doing this kind of a heinous crime, to be in character was very problematic for them. I remember Abhishek coming up to me and saying that he was finding it very difficult to cope with his character, it was troubling him. He was not able to sleep at night because he would keep getting dreams of what we had shot. His character, Sukha, is unapologetically black, there is no human side to him. In fact, Abhishek himself had said that he didn’t want to make Sukha human at all. Because the moment he did so, he would start relating to him.

There has been a lot of interest in Tara’s casting primarily because she has never played a gritty character like this before. What made you choose her? Did she surprise you on set?

There is a shot of her running and then she trips and falls. She ran and actually tripped, fell and sprained her ankle. I thought it was a part of the scene because it was a superb shot. She continued doing that for another 10-15 seconds before she burst out screaming that her ankle was hurting. But she didn’t give up because she did not want to spoil the shot.

Even after that, she took a half-hour break and then came back to shoot. She was ready to run again. That is just plain determination. And she ran again.

There are a lot of dragging and lifting scenes and a couple of times, her shoulder dislocated. But she would just hold on to her shoulder and keep doing the shots. Those shots are there in the film and you will not be able to make out that she has dislocated her shoulder. That kind of motivation I have not seen.

Also, I will tell you the reason for casting her. Apurva is a girl-next-door and when she is put in such extreme circumstances, she transforms. When you look at Tara, you feel that she is a pretty petite, fragile kind of a girl and that she going to succumb, but she doesn’t succumb... she transforms. There is a real transformation in both Tara and in Apurva and it is almost like Tara and Apurva have been feeding off each other. That is the kind of transformation you will get to see even in Tara.

You have been writing and directing for a while. With Apurva and Kill — that was feted at the Toronto International Film Festival recently — would you count this phase as your best?

Definitely. As time passes and we gain more experience, we mature differently. I feel that I am now in a situation where I am enjoying the process. I really enjoyed the making of Apurva because I had never shot in such a terrain before, never taken out these kind of emotions on screen. When they watch the film, whatever kind of screen it is on, I hope the audience feels it is very cinematic.

It is a different kind of a fulfilling experience and the same goes for Kill. Kill (co-produced by Karan Johar and Guneet Monga and starring Lakshya, Raghav Juyal and Tanya Maniktala) had different kinds of challenges, but it was extremely satisfying to make that kind of a film.

Priyanka Roy
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